HE STALKED into his own room, whirled to slam the door, and was vaguely irritated to realize it was one of those high-tech, new-fangled automatic-closing doors that just slid into place with a gentle whoosh! no matter how disgruntled you were.

     Striding to the mirror above his bureau, he clenched the corners with both hands and said in a low but intense voice, “All right, witch. Show yourself.”

     The mirror remained blank.

     “I have neither the time nor the patience,” he began, then suddenly felt an icy breath of wind slid across his back and a high-pitched cackle sounded in his ears. He whirled around.

     She stood in the middle of his room, a crone dressed in tattered dung-colored robes, her figure like that of a bent and warped stick. Gripped in what looked more like a jet-black talon than a hand was a long, gnarled wooden staff. Two yellow eyes glittered out of the depths of her cowl like twin candle flames.

     “So you have regained your powers,” he said, angry at having been caught off guard.

     The witch snorted most indelicately. “Oh, this is only a hologram. Don’t worry; I still need you to do my dirty work. Which, I assume,” she went on with a lift in her voice, “you are just about ready to do.”

     “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “I thought I’d have trouble with the Lion, but once I sat down in the cockpit, everything just came to me as if I could really remember it.”

     “You really can, you know,” the witch informed him. “Those memories didn’t come from me, after all. Not that’s it’s important just where they came from.”

     “Of course,” he agreed.

     “And you’ve had no trouble mingling with the Voltron Force?”

     “Not especially… I’ve kept a pretty low profile. One of them, though, this Lance, I think he suspects something, but I’ve tried to avoid him.”

     The yellow eyes flashed. “Nothing must hinder my plan! You will leave tonight.”

     “I was already planning on it.”

     “And you know the coordinates.”

     “Yes,” he said, and his mouth quirked into something not quite a smile.

     The witch cackled softly. “With the powers of the Blue Lion, and the coordinates in your head, nothing can stand in our way. Even should the Voltron Force follow you…well, they would not get far.”

     He joined in her laughter. “And then, your promise.”

     She stopped laughing abruptly. “Oh, yes. Of course. My promise to you.” She gave a slight wave of her staff, something flashed over his head, and he whirled to the mirror to see a thin band of gold now encircling his brow. He reached up to feel it, and realized it was only illusion. Still he preened a bit in front of the mirror.

     “What do you think of the fit?”

     He grinned at his image one last time, then turned to face the crone. “I like it.” He frowned slightly. “I quarreled with Princess Romelle, I’m afraid. It seems she’s not my ‘type’. Who in the world…”

     “It’s not important where your memories came from, remember? Or your face, though I admit the crown does look rather good on you. Anyway, however you court the woman is your own affair. I’m only taking care of the brother.”

     “Right.” He shrugged. “I’m not worried. She seems like the clingy type…it shouldn’t be hard to win her back. And it will only be for a short time.”

     “Yes, so…”

     “I shall leave tonight.”

     “Good. Safe journey…King of Pollux.”

     And with that, her image thinned, dwindled, and vanished.

     On a tiny world somewhere in the Denubian Galaxy, five people met again in a secret room. They sat in relative darkness, each aware of the others thoughts. There was no one in all the myriad of galaxies to hear them, yet they spoke in voices barely above a whisper.

     “The danger fast approaches,” the youngest male voice said in a hushed, strained voice.

     “We know this,” said the next, a woman. “Getting dramatic doesn’t change anything.”

     “We should implement-” the younger man began, but was interrupted quickly by a dark, rough feminine voice.

     “We should not, even if we could. And at this point, we cannot. It is simply not ready.”

     The youngest would have spoken again, but the rumbling, rich voice of the eldest forestalled his angry rejoinder. “I have lived in the galaxy longer than the four of you combined and have seen much of it, at least enough to know that there are times when a danger must be faced, so that it can better be understood. I have faith in the foresight of our ancestors! So should you all! For it is their far-reaching plan and not our own negligible defenses that shall see us through this darkness!”

     Prince Bandor hesitated at the door to his sister’s room, suddenly very unsure of himself. In the past, as the eldest, it had always been she who had comforted him. He had never had an easy time growing up on Pollux. His mother, the beautiful and valiant Queen Riavelle, had died shortly after his birth, and his father, even before he too turned to evil, had always been a distant figure. He had never had any real friends, since the Polluxians lived almost as much in terror of Zarkon’s far-reaching grasp as the Arusians, and most had secreted themselves away in caves. There had been Avoc, of course, the eldest of King Cova’s and Queen Riavelle’s three children, but Avoc too had been distant, frequently away from home and had eventually sided with Zarkon and allowed himself to be turned into a ro-beast, which the Voltron Force subsequently defeated. No, from the beginning there had always and only been Romelle, his pretty, kind-hearted, but strong-minded sister, five years his senior, for him to go running to whenever he needed advice or company.

     Now it seemed their roles had been reversed, and he had to be the one to assure her everything would be all right. Although (and this was the hard and confusing part) he was not at all sure things WOULD be all right. He too felt Sven’s loss very keenly. He had always greatly admired the Voltron Force, and since Keith’s former right-hand-man had taken up residence on Pollux, and appeared to have strong feelings for his sister, Bandor had been grateful and relieved to at last have a male role model in his life. He really looked up to Sven, the responsible, capable pilot who had flown with the Voltron Force and escaped from Planet Doom and who loved (or so Bandor inferred) his deserving sister. Or so Bandor had thought.

     Now…

     What could he say to Romelle?

     With a sigh, he knocked on her door resolutely. He waited. No answer came. He knocked louder. She cannot be asleep, he thought. It’s not THAT late. When still no reply came, Bandor shrugged, turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open.

     Inside, the room was dark. “Romelle?” Bandor called, reaching for the light switch. She would not like him in her room without permission, but-

     She would never know.

     Her room was completely deserted.

     Nor, when he searched the castle, did Bandor find any trace of her anywhere.

     It was a restless night all over the Denubian Galaxy, apparently! On Arus, Lance too was awake, having tried vainly for hours to sleep. Vexed, he eventually rolled out of bed, dressed, slid his battered leather jacket over his shoulders, and slipped out of his room. The dark trees outside the castle made strange and scary shadows along the corridor as Lance walked by the great windows. He paused momentarily by his friends’ doors, but decided against waking them.

     This was a night to be alone.

     Hands in his pockets, he moved swiftly down the stairs, into the Great Hall, down another series of winding corridors, and then out a small side door. Outside, the cool night breezes wafted over his face and he shivered slightly. Tilting his head upward he gazed at the stars and it suddenly seemed to him that he was the only person awake in all the galaxy. He tried to find his own Galaxy, the Milky Way, but he was weary and every star looked the same. I wonder if it’s day on Earth, he mused.

     Another planet came to his mind unbidden, a feather’s touch against his consciousness and he turned to find the Azure Quadrant. A wistful smile touched his lips as he found the Amethystine System easily. Memories came to him in wafts, like a flower’s scent carried on a summer breeze as he recalled another day and a woman on a planet covered with roses. “Oh, Lyra,” he murmured. “I left your lady sleeping in a bed as cold as these stars.”

     Suddenly he knew where he had to go, where he had been heading all along. His feet took him, before his mind had quite realized where they were going, down along the side of the castle, through a gate whose gilt bars tangled and twisted like briars and opened onto a small garden. Light from the twin moons of Arus turned the winding path beneath his feet into twin rivers of liquid silver. All around him as he walked, roses dark with night, untroubled by the chill in the air, gathered in clusters. He closed his eyes and he was in another day, far from Arus, kneeling on a ruined, burned-out plain, a waning sun hot against his back, cradling a dying woman in his arms.

     He did not often think of Farla who had bid him plant this garden with her dying breath, so that the beautiful roses of Lyra, with their strange and magical healing properties, would thrive. It was only on nights like this, when he felt very much alone in the universe that he felt the need to conjure her to him. And then he felt so unimaginably angry with Keith and with Sven, who had found the women who could share their thoughts and dreams and adventures, and who dared keep them at a distance. He could still see her dark eyes closing in sudden pain, her long dark hair tangling in his hand, the cold earth beneath his knees, the rustling of the dead rose bushes in the pale wind…

     He stopped suddenly, eyes wide open.

     The sound he had heard was real.

     And in a far-off cell, cold and dark as space itself, the prisoner woke slowly from the deep sleep that often follows a long fever. He opened his eyes once more to the darkness and discerned what he first took to be twin lanterns shedding their wan yellow light down on him through the gloom from what seemed to be very far away. But as the rest of his senses came slowly awake he became aware of a rank and fetid breath hanging about the air, and knew the lights to be two long eyes, the color of withered lemons, and wrenchingly familiar. He made a small sound halfway between rage and terror, and that awful high-pitched laughter he knew so well from living nightmares came to him again.

     “So you do remember me,” the voice, like jagged fingernails drawn across a slate, grated against his ears. “We have had too long a history, you and I, to make me believe you would forget me…unless you are truly as stupid as your pathetic little friends on Arus and Pollux.”

     She paused, as if for a response, but none was forthcoming. He lay rigid, staring up at those cold, burning eyes, and words failed him.

     “I begin to wonder if you do remember me,” the voice mused. “Perhaps you are as stupid as I thought all along. Fool! Do you even you who you are?”

     His own voice-how faraway it sounded!-rustled in his ears, faint under the molten wax of her eyes, but he was beyond caring whether she heard or not: “I know who you are, Witch Haggar, as surely as I know my own name.”

     Tiny white teeth, sharp as the ends of knives glittered in a cruel smile beneath those pools of wan yellow light. “An interesting choice of words, indeed.”

     She fell silent after that, as if amused by whatever she had left unspoken. With a growing sense of dread, the prisoner gathered his strength for a valiant retort: “Whatever your scheme, old witch, the Voltron Force will foil it!”

     Her smile only slid wider at his outburst. “Oh, I’m sure they’ll try,” she said almost sweetly. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for them to come for you. As we speak, the friends in whom you put so much faith are about to stumble headlong into an ingenious and highly fatal trap of my devising.”

     “What does this ro-beast look like?”

     Her furious snarl rent the air all around him like lightning and he winced in alarm at her sudden fury. “You! Dare you mock me? Just because you and your pretty princess destroyed my secret laboratory, do you think my powers are ended? Fool, you have no notion of what true evil is! Did you think you could ever destroy my evil magic? Fool! True evil can never be destroyed and you are powerless in its grasp. Do not think,” she hissed, her eyes suddenly very near his, though he could see no more of her, “that you will escape again. My own vengeance will be satisfied when Lotor, who is at this minute on his way, tares your worthless hide limb from limb, or however he chooses to exact his revenge on you for thwarting his own schemes. Until then, you will find it is impossible to escape from this dungeon.”

     The eyes whirled away and he was plunged once again in darkness. He heard the clank of a door swinging open on rusty hinges, thought she was leaving, but then she swung back over him, her face very close to his. Her clawed, gnarled hand twisted around the little gold ring he wore on a thin chain at his throat. She said in a voice like the crackling of a fire, “And do not think your precious Princess Romelle is safe from my vengeance, either. Perhaps when Lotor and I are through, she will then be a more fitting companion to one such as you…or whatever’s left of you.” She gave the chain one savage yank and it broke in her hand. A small cry escaped his lips as though she caused him physical pain. She gave a brief smile of satisfaction, and then was gone.

     The door thundered shut with a clang that seemed to shake the world.

     In the heavy, suffocating darkness and silence that followed, Sven Bjørnsen struggled violently with the chains and fetters that held him, but they held firm and he only succeeded in exhausting his small reserve of strength. He lay back, shaking, weary, and gave himself up to the darkness and to despair.


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